Read The People in the Castle: Selected Strange Stories for Free Online Page A

her. No one in his whole life had ever done such a thing for him.
    “You really mean that? You’d give me your lizard in exchange for Noel?” He stared at her with open mouth. “ Well —that’s—um—I take that very kindly. It’s—it’s very—acceptable. And it makes sense; you know how to look after Noel, he’s taken quite a fancy to you. But,” Miles added with a twinge of guilt, “are you sure?”
    “Oh yes. Yes, I’ m sure, ” she said quietly.
    Miles did not wait another second, or look at her again, in case she changed her mind. He threw a leg over his bike, tucked the lizard in his pocket, and sped off along the dusty road to the nearest forest entrance.
    Noel and Hannah, though, stood gazing after Miles as long as he was in sight. And Noel threw up his trunk and let out a long, piercing, echoing wail of grief.
    “Pipe down, Leon my duck,” said Hannah. “We’ve just got to make the best of things.”
    But she, too, sighed deeply as she went off to buy a pennyworth of water.
    When he reached the passport point, Miles found himself behind a woman dressed in black from head to foot. She wept all the way along in queue, sobbing and snuffling. Miles wished that she would stop. It was an unsettling noise.
    When the woman showed a tortoise to the guard, he said,
    “Here, who are you trying to fool? That tortoise has been dead for days,” and he threw it away disgustedly. Nor would he allow her through, no matter how she cried and beseeched him. “It was for a wreath of words for my baby’ s tombstone — she died last week —she was only seven months—”
    “Can’t help that, missis. Got to have a live animal, between thirty grammes and twenty kilos. That’s the law.”
    As the woman turned to go, Miles saw her face.
    “Here,” he mumbled, “you’d better have this lizard. I daresay I’ll be able to get hold of another. Take it. Go on, take it.”
    The woman gulped a few inaudible words, took the lizard, showed it to the bored guard, who shrugged and stamped her pass; then she hurried off into the forest, which received her like a dark green book opening and closing.
    Miles shambled away from the checkpoint. His mind felt a bit numb. He hardly knew what to do with himself. The only thing of which he was certain was that he could not go back and tell Hannah that he had given away her lizard to a stranger. And yet that was the only thing he wanted to do. He longed for the cup of mint tea he knew she would have made him, and for Noel’s welcoming bellows of joy.
    A river ran into the forest not far away. Miles went and sat on its bank, by the wire barricade that bridged it.
    “Can’t use the fish from there!” called the guard from the checkpoint. “Fish ain’t legal tender.”
    Miles did not trouble to reply. He squatted, peering into the thick grey-green muddy water, as if he hoped to see his own reflection there.
    Several weeks passed by.

    Noel missed Miles dreadfully. He moaned, he keened and droned. He pined and lost weight. His ears drooped. He seemed to find less enjoyment from his bath. Hannah began to worry about him. She, too, missed Miles, but at least she was able to cheer herself by imagining him in the forest. And she had developed a new hobby: she picked up trampled words, straightening them or rinsing them in Noel’s bath water, and stitched them together. Attractive, best deal, sought after, monster, hopefuly, impractical . . . her idea was to make a big quilted patchwork blanket for Noel, now that winter was on the way; gale-force winds blew, Noel shivered at night and whimpered in his sleep, drifts of words blew about and piled in corners. “That elephant’s not in good shape,” said a boundary inspector who passed by in a truck. “I may have to send the Prevention Officer to have him painlessly put to sleep. We can’t have elephant sickness along the border.”
    Then Hannah had a better idea. But she knew that she would have to act speedily. She spun words into